


The Name of that Planet

by Ori_Cat



Category: Relic Master Series - Catherine Fisher
Genre: "It" used as a pronoun, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: "But Kest told me about Earth."





	The Name of that Planet

On the days where he will sleep for 18 hours straight (it only ever sleeps 5, and it knows that even for humans 18 is not normal), it will make food, and bring it to him, and it will say, “Tell me about Earth.” 

And he will describe what it is like to live in a world with nine billion people, in buildings and rooms beside and over and under yours, nine billion people you’re obligated to greet and speak to and be friendly with. He will tell it about buildings hundreds of levels tall, and panels of concrete – roads – meshing them, about driving to the end of these and stepping out to find that greenness still remains, in parks and on hillsides and unsuitable land. He will describe what it is like to have dust coating your shoes and burrs caught in your clothes, the brush of pine needles against your hands. 

He will tell about throwing stones into lakes, about deep blue skies with as many as fifty stars, about orange cityshine glowing from the undersides of the clouds, about rainbows and thunderstorms in summer. He will tell it about the yellow sun, and the white and changeable moon. 

* * *

On the days when he turns on the computer but does nothing, just stares at the screen for hours on end, it will take a second chair and sit beside him, and it will say, “Tell me about Earth.” 

And he will tell it of over one hundred countries, and thousands of languages, so many races and cultures and ideas, and the careful dance of politics all countries do between one another, but also about the benefits of the trade and migration. 

He will talk about schools, passions for learning and frustrations with it all mixed together. He will tell it how humans write and read books, stories that never truly happened, and make movies, and dance, and ride on tamed animals and machines, all for entertainment. He will describe how humans court with awkwardness and guilt, and touch their lips to show affection, and how they pant-cough – called laughter – to show their joy. 

He will tell it about shipping lanes and airplanes and train tracks run underground, but also about blue mountains stretching to the sky and chasms in the deep blacks of the sea that nobody has ever explored. He will tell how new species are being dredged up from those depths regularly, and the ripple of excitement that passes through the scientific community every time a new discovery is announced. He will speak about huge databases accessible to all, and spheres of satellites ringing the planet, and how they – more than once – tried to contact aliens, if they existed, but clearly missed the real ones. 

* * *

On the days when the glass slides are put away haphazardly and broken ones, wrapped in paper marked with red (not amber), are tossed in the waste, it will find him and it will ask “Tell me about Earth.” 

And he will tell it Earth’s history, the periods defined retrospectively by the last species arisen, and the five great dyings; about the mystery of the Permian and the youth of plants. He will tell about the last species, and the last great dying; about reading of the long-ago losses of Pinta tortoises in his grandparents’ time and passenger pigeons and dodos beforehand, back when extinction was feared. He will describe growing up with dying animals, knowing that by the time you are gone the garter snakes you played with in the ditches, the sharks you read about in the magazine, the fungi you glimpsed in the book will all have gone before you. He will describe the realization that you are growing cynical, that the loss of another insect, another algae no longer grieves you, that you are ceasing to believe you could ever help to save them. 

He will tell of seed banks hiding plants with no space in the wild, and rushes to sequence all organisms that could be found before they vanished and their genomes were their only remembrance; mines running dry, and cities built on poor land sinking under the weight of their inhabitants. 

He will tell it about wars over water, wars over food, wars over space to live, wars over beliefs. He will tell it about droughts, green plants dead in ditches and over gardens, broken states in desert lands. He will describe cities and estuaries and countries taken by the rise of the dark ocean water, the great quake that jacked up the coastline he lived near, falling aquifers and washed-off topsoil and layers of salt. He tells it about mechanical pollination, since the bees went. He will speak of swarms of insects and waves of viruses and infections no drug can heal. 

“We destroyed it,” he will say. 

* * *

On the day before the others come to take him away and he goes resignedly with them, it finds him with the animals and it says, “Tell me about Earth.” 

And he tells it about how they found Anara, a blip in the light of a distant star, and with the development of the silver doorways – the “shiver” or fluidity in space, not technically a wormhole – the colonists were proven right and plans were made to go. They had needed more than one Earth to support themselves for a while now, and now they had more than one. 

He tells it how the six of them went out, the last night, forgetting politics and terraforming plans and responsibilities for just a little while, and they watched the moon rise. Because they were still humans, and however long they were charged to spend on Anara they would still always need their moon and their sun and their planet, Earth. 

And his voice breaks, in regret for himself and the six of them and his entire broken, beloved world when he tells it, “This was supposed to be our second chance.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Robert Priest's poem _The Water Traders' Dream_.


End file.
